Rosalind was beyond pissed.
"You have got to be kidding me," she sneered when she awoke in the Salvatore cellar, bound to a chair with the same chains she and Tyler had used on their full moons. Her skin stung, reeking of wolfsbane and vervain. There was a piece of wood in her abdomen that she couldn't reach.
She tried to move her feet, triggering a string that tilted a bucket over her head, drenching her in hot water. She cried out from the discomfort as it made the burns on her skin worse.
"She's awake."
Her eyes drifted upwards as Damon came in, followed by Tyler.
Rosalind laughed dryly. "Tyler. You have some nerve coming back here after what you did. I'm surprised Klaus hasn't cut your head off yet."
"Likewise," said Tyler. "Bonnie did a spell. Klaus won't know I'm here."
"Mm..." she tilted her head, "Well, when he comes by, I'll just tell him. He and Kol brought me here, didn't they? God, and I was thinking they'd be the ones that would allow me to do whatever the hell I wanted. I thought they'd like me better this way. I'll be sure to shove the white oak stake in Kol's heart before I go and kill Elijah. Klaus, I can't kill until I find a way to unlink myself from him. But it should be possible. And I'll derive great pleasure from watching him burn."
"There you go," said Damon. "You're feeling anger and hate."
Rosalind glared at him. "I think it would be interesting to watch you bite off your own tongue and choke on it... on repeat. While your skin is carved off piece by piece."
"You can lash out all you want," said Damon. "You're too weak to do anything. You've been having neck-snap-naps for days now while we bled you and seeped you in wolfsbane. You're vervain-free and you haven't had blood in days."
"I fed more in the past week than I have in all the time I've been a hybrid, about ten times over. You haven't weakened me enough."
She slammed herself and the chair into the nearest wall, ignoring the burn of the hot water falling onto her. The chair shattered, loosening the chains enough for her to slip out. Within an instant she had Damon's heart in her fist.
"Make one move," she warned Tyler, "and he's dead. And you should know I want to kill him. So get me my phone and whatever else you took from me and I'll be on my way."
There was a scuffling sound from around the hall. Tyler ducked as a jet of wolfsbane water was shot at her from a water gun wielded by Caroline. Rosalind unintentionally released her grip on Damon's heart to shield her face, yelling out in pain. The two vampires rushed in, restraining her while Tyler took the chains, wrapping them so tightly around her that she was left stiff as a board on the simple bed in the cell.
"I will kill all of you," she seethed angrily. "I will remove your eyeballs and make you eat them—"
"Get it all out," urged Damon. "Every ounce of anger to remind you of what you feel. Of the emotions you have and have had. Now that we've ensured she's properly restrained, why don't we start with the ah... presentations?"
Caroline nodded. "All of us want to help you, Rosalind, which is why almost all of us have prepared something to remind you of your humanity. To bring up good memories."
Rosalind rolled her eyes. "Let me see if I can guess which will be the lamest acts. Let's start with you, Caroline. You'll probably remind me of all the times I cooked and baked for you when you were feeling unwell. And all the times I was there to hear you out. Well, you should know I faked giving a shit because I actually pitied your mom for having to grieve while dealing with a nosy, stuck-up, conceited bitch like you."
The blonde was silent, averting her gaze. "Next lamest will probably be anything Matt and Jeremy could come up with," continued Rosalind. "Reminding me of the times I gave them rides, back when I cared if they got home safely or not. They're children, immature and just so whiny. If they come anywhere near me, I'll feel no remorse when I feed from them until I'm strong enough to murder all of you in one fell swoop."
"Don't worry," said Damon simply, "they weren't going to be anywhere in the main act. And neither's Stef cause we all know you'd rather be tortured on repeat than hear a single word come out of his mouth."
Rosalind's eyes shone maliciously. "Wow, Damon, not as dumb as you look, huh? Finally started to have original ideas. Only took you a century to start thinking for yourself instead of being a pretty boy with anger issues and leaving yourself with no real friends who would ever give a shit about you. You act all bad and pretend your good side is something people have to earn but the reality is you're a coward and a manipulator and liar and you think you're hilarious but you're actually the most unfunny person I've ever met, and it's really pathetic that you have to try and compensate for the brains you lack using humor that nobody enjoys. You're obsessive and it's the whole reason why all these problems started piling up in the first place so actually, Damon, my predicament is your fault."
Damon glanced at Tyler. "What do you say? We bring in the big guns right away?"
He pursed his lips. "Start with Kol. Work your way up to the big guns. We need to soften her first. Otherwise she'll kill them."
Rosalind was left alone, bathed again in wolfsbane, to wait for Kol's arrival. He walked in with a chair for himself. "Rosalind," he said calmly. "You've looked better on other days."
She tilted her head, a maniacal glint in her eyes. "At least I look good sometimes. You'll never have that, because you'll always be in Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah's shadows. A pathetic little boy pining for attention of any kind."
Kol pretended this didn't bother him. "You recall why we started to get to know each other more, right? You wanted so badly to care for your Pack, to be strong for them. You came to love them so much you fought tooth and nail, putting your blood, sweat, and tears into training to protect them even if time and time again, Nik and I broke you and left you shivering on the floor. You cared so much you were willing to succumb to pain if it would only mean that you'd be able to help them protect themselves."
"And then your brother killed all of them," said Rosalind. "Your brother murdered them and left me with nothing. Added twelve names to an already long list of loved ones I lost. If this is your attempt to reconnect me with my humanity, it's not going to work. And before you suggest a hands-on demonstration, just know that I don't care about what pain I feel. You aren't going to get me to feel anything by reminding me about why I trained or why I fought so hard for equal power with Klaus."
"No?" Kol seized her head, forcing his own memories into her head. Forcing her to see visions of herself, teaching the hybrids the same things he'd shown her. How she guided them, cared for them, laughed and cooked for them. She couldn't shove his hands aside with her own, given they were bound.
"STOP!" she yelled at last, shoving him out of her mind. "They are dead, do you hear me? They are dead and they're not coming back. There is nobody to care about so I am done caring. Get out of here." When he didn't move, she spat, "GET OUT OF HERE!"
He decided to leave. She was alone for several moments before Tyler came in, alongside his mother.
"Oh, god," whispered Carol, nearly bursting into tears at the sight of Rosalind restrained so tightly. "She's in pain, Tyler..."
"She has to be, Mom," he said. "She'll attack us otherwise."
"This is your fault, you know?" Rosalind sneered at Tyler. "You were a selfish little boy, leaving home without so much as a goodbye to your mother, formulating a plan to free the hybrids despite what I told you... letting yourself be manipulated by a bitch like Hayley, out of all people! It's because of you that those hybrids are dead. You handed them to Klaus on a silver platter."
"That's not what we're here to talk about," said Tyler. "Go on, Mom. Show her."
Carol held up a small photo album. "I was clearing boxes in the attic and I found this. It's from the seven months leading up to your birth, from the moment your mother learned she was pregnant."
"A fat load of good that'll do," said Rosalind. "My mother abandoned me, she means nothing to me."
"She catalogued everything," continued Carol. "Every appointment, every movement, every bit her belly grew. She wrote notes to you, messages she'd hope you would see one day."
"She clearly didn't care to stick around, so it doesn't matter to me."
"She had every intention to," said Carol. "I'll never understand why she left. I don't know if she suffered from Postpartum Depression and needed an escape, I don't know if it became too much and she felt something she couldn't explain. I don't know why your mother left but this book... it is still a beautiful testament of the life she wanted you to have. The expectations she had. She wrote about the way she thought you would look. The activities you'd be involved in. Hobbies you might have. Tyler, show her."
Tyler went to sit with her, flipping through the pages slowly. As much as she tried not to look, Rosalind couldn't peel her eyes away, never having seen so many different pictures of her mother. She was so young. Just sixteen and already holding her growing belly, writing in her notes about the day she learned she was having a girl. The day she'd decided to name her Rosalind. The day she felt her kicking for the first time.
Carol pointed at a particular note written on week thirty of the pregnancy. Rosalind read in her head, 'Rosalind kicked a lot today. She must have heard Mason singing while he put the cradle together. He insists she's going to be like him, good with her hands, able to craft and build the way he does. I think she'll have his eyes. I want her to. She's already so beautiful in my mind. Strong, physically and emotionally. Sweet and caring. And like Mason, who tries so hard to stay out of all the problems here. He'd never hurt a fly. She'll be good. I know it.'
Rosalind tossed the book aside. "She left," she reiterated furiously. "She left, so all of this, it means nothing. It means nothing that she wanted me to be like my father, that she wanted me to be good. Would she say the same shit if she stuck around to actually find out what I'd be like? Would she say the same shit if she knew what I'd become? She didn't get a say in anything because she wasn't here! All these expectations and dreams are pathetic, coming from the hand of a woman who couldn't even stick around to raise the daughter she pretended to care so much about."
The other woman had tears in her eyes. "She wanted to, Rosalind. Whatever drew her away, it was... it was clearly something she felt would put you in danger."
"That's what you assume," said Rosalind scathingly. "What, because she was like the sister you never had? Because you had fun talking to her and getting to know her, thinking you might have a cool in-law for the rest of your life? You think so highly from her but I know what she is without needing to speak to her. She is a selfish bitch and I am done hearing about her. Everyone already tells me I look like her, so it's enough torture to wear her face. Get out of my sight. Leave. Leave, just like my mother left. I won't forget that she abandoned me."
"And now, you're leaving us, too?" whispered Carol. "Allowing your humanity to escape, denying that you feel anything... you're detaching yourself and you're abandoning us just like she abandoned you."
Rosalind tried to stand, but the chains kept her on the bed. "Don't you dare compare me to her!" she sneered. "She left for no good reason when I was three days old! THREE DAYS! At least I put up a fucking fight, at least I have a reason for wanting to leave it all behind and do whatever the hell I want. All of you are ruining that, so get out! GET OUT! GET OUT, BEFORE I KILL YOU BOTH!"
Tyler quickly ushered his mother out of the cell. Rosalind rolled her eyes when she heard Carol crying on the way upstairs.
Damon came in to keep an eye on her. "You are being such a bitch to your aunt."
"And you're a dick to everyone," said Rosalind. "You and I are the same in that respect. And you're a whole lot worse." She leaned back against the wall as best as she could. "I can't imagine the other 'big gun' is Klaus considering he's the one who killed the hybrids and the one who chose to let me turn it off instead of killing me like I asked him to. Plus, if he comes here, he's going to find out Tyler is in Mystic Falls, which means he'll kill him. So... what's next on the agenda? What other pitiful act is going to come forth and completely fail at getting me to turn my humanity back on?"
"Oh, this act isn't coming to you," said Damon, sweeping forward and snapping her neck. As soon as she crumpled into his arms, Bonnie and Elena stepped inside.
"Are you sure about this?" asked Damon as they set up for a spell. "If you get even one thing wrong, she's going to realize it's not real and we'll have exhausted all options. Klaus doesn't want to compel her because he thinks it'll drive her insane. If she turns it back on before she's ready, it could do permanent damage."
"We've got this," said Elena. "I wrote out every scenario. I spoke with Klaus and he helped me plan everything I could show her. Kol had some witches find out more about the Other Side to recreate it perfectly. Bonnie's illusion will work."
"It better," said Damon.
When Rosalind opened her eyes, she was standing out in the forest, a blue-green hue over everything she looked at. It was cold and dark. Empty. She was completely alone.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded, looking over her body. She found some blood staining her shirt, right over where her heart was. She made the assumption Bonnie and Elena wanted to. "No. No, no, no, he ripped out my fucking heart! Is that it?" She yelled out at the sky, "So, you killed me because I wanted to be dead? You always were a jealous and controlling bastard, Damon!"
She started to feel nervous. "I'm on the Other Side... that has to be it... it can't be over! I didn't want it to be over, I didn't... I didn't ask for this!"
"Ro."
She whirled around at the sound of her father's voice. "Dad?" she whispered when she saw him, a disappointed look on his face. "Am... am I dead?"
"Yeah," he said quietly. "And now you're stuck here like the rest of us." He shook his head. "This isn't what I wanted for you, Ro. This isn't what your mom wanted—"
"Shut up!" she snapped. "Why does everyone feel the need to bring her up?! She abandoned me. And you let me believe a lie for sixteen years, letting me think she died in childbirth instead of being truthful. From the moment she left, I was set on a path to lose everyone that ever mattered to me. I don't regret shutting my switch off. I don't."
"Really?" Mason inquired. "Even though you lost all your friends? You know, they got so sick of you, so annoyed with your lack of response to their help, that they preferred to kill you." He grasped her hand, and allowed her to see a scene in the cell, where her dead body lay, her heart beside it.
"You killed her?" Elena had cried out, finding Damon standing over her. "Why?!"
"She was too far gone," he said scathingly. "She was going to resist for the rest of her life. She wanted to die, so I killed her. Freed her from the misery of this world."
Elena slapped him across the face. "I wanted to help her! I didn't want to give up! How could you decide this without consulting anyone? How— how could you just take that authority when you're hardly her friend? I didn't want to lose her, Damon! And she—" she started to breathe heavily, holding her chest, "she just became another person on the long list of people I've lost... oh god..." she held her head in her hands. "I can't do this. This is it. This is the last straw."
Damon's eyes widened. "Oh, no, no, you better not be thinking what—"
"What, Damon?" Elena snapped. "That maybe, just maybe, I want the pain to stop, too? What will you do? Will you kill me? No. I don't think you will. I'm done. I'm done with all of this." She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, all the light was gone from them. "There. All better."
"Do you regret it now?" asked Mason. Rosalind's eyes were filled with rageful tears when she internalized the fact Elena would turn her humanity off because she lost her. "Now, her life will be cut short, because it's only a matter of time before someone kills her like they killed you."
"It's not like I wanted that to happen!" said Rosalind in disbelief, stepping away from him, and trying to run away. "No, no, I didn't ask for that! I didn't imply I wanted her to turn it off!"
"You knew it might happen," challenged Mason as he followed her. "You're a smart girl, Ro, you always knew how to anticipate the outcome of certain actions. It's how you strategize in the games you win, it's how you choose which athletes to put in which races when you coach. You know how one victory will affect others, you know how one mistake can lead to losing the league championships. You always planned ahead, so I refuse to believe you didn't imagine that you'd ruin Elena's life when you chose to do this despite her begging you to wait for her. You had to have known that she'd feel so much pain from watching you suffer, from watching you become this broken, evil person, that she might just join you so that she could be near you without it hurting so damn much. This isn't how I raised you to be, Rosalind! I raised you to be a fighter, and you gave up."
"You don't know what I was feeling!" she shrieked, rubbing her arms anxiously. She never did like when her father scolded her, when he looked disappointed in her. "You don't know how much pain I was in, I had to escape it! I had to!"
"Had to, or wanted to?" asked Mason. "Because if it was something you had to do, truly, to protect yourself, you wouldn't have used it to kill a whole bunch of innocent people. Even after I triggered my curse, after Tyler triggered his, and after you triggered yours, you made it a point to not hurt anyone. No, Ro, you wanted to escape it and use it as an excuse to give into every bit of darkness inside of you. You wanted to be the villain so you could make any excuse you wanted to. It was the coward's way out. Just a reason to hurt people who didn't do shit to you. People who had families, lives, futures. Did you just forget everything we went through when you were growing up? How many good people helped us, financially and otherwise, because I feared I wouldn't be able to provide for you? I taught you to respect people, to value them, and you just killed anybody that you crossed paths with, and for what? For nothing!"
"D-Dad, I'm sorry," she whimpered, holding up her hands in surrender. "I wanted to be free, I wanted to stop feeling that pain..."
Mason grabbed her again. "And in the process, you lost yourself, and now, the girl you care about is going down the same path. Losing herself. And because of it, Jeremy will probably die. Matt. Bonnie. People who you actually cared about. Hell, your Aunt Carol and Tyler might die too because Elena doesn't care about anything anymore. You gave up on life, on the future you might have had. Now, Elena's given up on her future. A future you two might have shared if you hadn't turned your back on her. Here. Look at the future you were gonna have. The future neither of you will get anymore."
"Good morning." She saw herself glancing up at Elena, who was walking down the stairs, a shirt folded over her arms, which were crossed over her stomach. "How are you feeling?"
"I feel good," said Elena. "I think it worked, Rosalind. The procedure."
Rosalind grinned. "You think?"
"I really do. I was thinking... you know, depending on the symptoms, I could take some time off. Fix up the guest bedroom and turn it into a nursery. Tyler already said he's going to help me paint and redo the floors."
"Well, I should take time off, too!" said Rosalind. "I can't leave you to do all that while pregnant, you'll be overworking yourself. We can afford it. The other doctors can handle the clinic and honestly, right now, all my athletes are moving onto their physical therapy phase at different locations closer to their homes. I don't have new patients to worry about. The other sports medicine physician at our practice can handle that."
"Are you sure?" asked Elena.
"I'm one hundred percent sure. As soon as we can confirm that you're pregnant, we can do it. We can... we can fix up that room as beautifully as we want for Baby Gilbert-Lockwood to enjoy."
Elena wrapped her arms around her. "I'm so happy, Rosalind. We both have good jobs that we like. We have this perfect house with a spacious backyard. Tyler's helping us have the family we want... and we're just a few short weeks away from becoming moms... or at least, soon-to-be moms when we see if the procedure worked or not."
Rosalind drew back to hold her face. "I love you, Elena Lockwood. And I can't wait to see you with that pregnancy glow."
"Assuming I have a glow," said Elena with a giggle. "What if it's all the icky stuff?"
"It might be. But you will still look radiant. You're going to bring a life into this world... our baby. I could never thank you enough for it. It's a wondrous miracle and you will look stunning the entire time. Trust me."
The vision ended. "No, go back," said Rosalind shakily. "I want to see the rest!"
"It isn't real, Rosalind," said Mason. "That life is not real and it will never be real. You gave up on your future. You forfeited that chance at happiness. Now, you're just stuck here. Dead."
He held onto her shoulders. "You gave up on this."
Memories burst forth. All the good moments she'd had since arriving in Mystic Falls. Where she met every person in the friend group. How she and Caorline had helped Tyler through his full moons. How she'd gotten to know Elena and shared several milkshakes and fries with her. How she'd trained the hybrids and loved them for the entire time she'd known them.
"There was so much more left to your life," said Mason, brushing his knuckles over her face. "Forget for a moment that your mom walked out on us. Just think about what you read in that booklet, the dreams she had for what you might become. We both knew that you'd likely experience loss and pain. And yeah you've had a whole lot more than any person ever should. But the world doesn't stop turning when any single person dies. It sucks in the moment, and you feel this awful ache wondering how people can move on when someone so important is gone. Think about the people you killed. Their families probably felt that same pain, and hated that life went on while their loved one was being buried. You are so strong, Rosalind. You always have been. And I knew from the moment I first held you that you were going to be better than all of us. You were going to do great things and you have. No life is lived without suffering. What matters is how you overcome it, what you do with that pain, how you use it to help others who are hurting in the same way. How you plan ahead to prevent it from happening again. You will never get back the people you lost and you won't see those hybrids again, but do you really think any of us would have wanted you to give up? To be the villain? No, our hearts ached when yours did, but we wanted you to flourish despite our absence. To grow and learn and love, love so deeply that you'd find something worth living for. You can run from the pain but it won't make it go away. Instead, you face it. You fight. And you rise above and you move on because that is what we would have wanted. For you to live on."
"I regret it," she whimpered as she started to bawl. "Oh, oh god... I regret it. I want to go back! I just want to go back, I don't want to be dead! I can't be dead, I want to take it all back!"
Her father disappeared. As did the forest and the blue-green hue.
She was back in the cell, staring ahead at Bonnie and Elena, who were crouched in front of her. The chains were gone. Rosalind was able to reach her hand up to her own face, feeling the tears that'd streamed out of her eyes.
"I'm not dead," she said shakily. "I'm not... I'm not dead..."
"Do you feel that?" asked Elena, reaching out and taking her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "That relief, when you realize there is still hope? Still a chance to be here, to have a life? A future? I know it won't be the same as what you envisioned with the hybrids and I know it will hurt every day that you miss them. But each day, it hurts less. And you'll remember them and be happy for what you had. And then the next time you find someone who needs help... you help them the way you helped the hybrids. You love them the same way and you feel... everything beautiful that can exist amidst the pain."
Where the lights had been dim, there was a singular shining light that burst out, clearing her vision and illuminating the whole room. Bonnie and Elena didn't see it. But Rosalind did. And she felt it, how much the weight lifted off her chest as she turned it back on.
She brought her hands to cover her mouth. "All those people. Everything I did... what I said and oh, god..." she squeezed her eyes shut, recalling how she'd been acting with Kol and Klaus up until the point that they brought her here. "What have I done? What have I done... oh god..."
"You're back," said Elena, sitting beside her and cupping her cheek. "That's what you did. You brought yourself back after hitting rock bottom. If you survived this, you will survive anything. There is a future out there for you, Rosalind. A future for us."
"I'm sorry," Rosalind sobbed, leaning onto her shoulder. "I'm so sorry..."
"I know," said Elena, caressing the back of her head. "I know. I forgive you. All of us forgive you."